Rambus is the company best known for suing dozens of companies over memory patents that it holds and is suing so prolifically, that many just see this company as a patent troll. It has been accused many times of obtaining submarine patents while a member of the JEDEC group until a decade ago, which it is now fraudulently using to try and extort royalties from every other company using DDR memory and its derivatives. Unfortunately, those lawsuits didn't stick, encouraging Rambus to carry on enthusiastically. Rambus won patent fights against NVIDIA and Samsung for example, who now have to pay them ongoing royalties. However, it looks like Rambus may have bitten off more than it could chew, because it has just lost a $4 billion antitrust lawsuit against Micron Technology Inc and Hynix Semiconductor Inc, erasing more than half of the chipmaker's value as investors abandoned its stock in droves. Rambus stock immediately plunged more than 60% on this good news.

Rambus's central claim was that Micron and Hynix had colluded to fix prices of memory chips, to prevent Rambus technology from being widely used and claimed that this collusion cost them over $4 billion in lost profits. However, it looks like the court didn't buy this argument for lack of proof and handed the win to Rambus's opponents in a 9 to 3 vote, at the end of a three month trial. Rambus has been suing competitors instead of out-innovating them for about a decade now and has been more successful at this game than would have been expected. It still has several other lawsuits ongoing though and with these same companies too, but this loss could be a taste of things to come, which might finally call a halt to their brazen litigious activities. Rambus said that they might appeal this decision, which isn't surprising as it's a high stakes game for them and potentially precedence setting, so one can expect that they won't go down without a fight. Let's just hope that they do go down though.Sources: Yahoo, MarketWatch

Know what'd be nice? Rambus dropping so low in value that some consortium of companies deem it worth buying for it's IP. I'd like to see all the memory-tech companies in the world get a crack at Rambus' tech, suck what little useful innovation is there out of it, and end up with some future standard like DDR that incorporates everything good about both tech-paths.

Although it's a lot more likely that if they did get bought, the tech would remain proprietary, at least any part of it which on its own or combined with other technologies affords said company a significant enough performance advantage over standardised memory that it becomes attractive to buy into the proprietary system

by: m4gicfourKnow what'd be nice? Rambus dropping so low in value that some consortium of companies deem it worth buying for it's IP. I'd like to see all the memory-tech companies in the world get a crack at Rambus' tech, suck what little useful innovation is there out of it, and end up with some future standard like DDR that incorporates everything good about both tech-paths.

Although it's a lot more likely that if they did get bought, the tech would remain proprietary, at least any part of it which on its own or combined with other technologies affords said company a significant enough performance advantage over standardised memory that it becomes attractive to buy into the proprietary system

what IP? what have the made in the last decade? DDR has progressed FAR beyond anything they actually produced. XDR? Blown away by GDDR5 right? that will trickle down to us end users as DDR5 RAM...

by: Neuromancerwhat IP? what have the made in the last decade? DDR has progressed FAR beyond anything they actually produced. XDR? Blown away by GDDR5 right? that will trickle down to us end users as DDR5 RAM...

EDIT: Actually I expect GDDR5 will be blown away by DDR5.

Well if you believe Rambus, any derivative of DDR is their intellectual property. So DDR5 is theirs, as is DDR3 and 2 and plain old DDR. Of course GDDR5 is theirs too, as is GDDR4 and 3...

So it might get to the point where all the memory manufacturers, and video card makers, just might find it worth while to buy the company just so they don't have to spend shitloads of money to defend themselves against Rambus' bullshit lawsuits.

by: TheLostSwedeIt's not YouTube that's evil, it's the US law makers and the music, movie and TV companies that are evil as they're the ones enforcing that content is block... Ok, this is way off topic but hey...

Ah there ya go Marks take on the MTV Micheal Jackson uprising in the mid eighties ....That little faggot got his money on mtv .........and a custom jet ....Oh we are talking about Rambus right ? great thanks now im gonna be listening to "Brothers in Arms" all day greatest Dire album of all time...Also for the guy that said the cgi took a long time ..Yeah but they won the first Grammy for videos that year for it:)

Forgot to say Sting from the Police did the backup vocals on this song lol.....

by: Easy Rhinoback then that opening CGI probably took months to render.

I wonder if it's 24-bit? Storing and displaying static 24-bit pictures back then was very expensive, let alone animating them. That old crappy FX5200 I've got knocking around is a supercomputer compared to that. :p

Guys, Rambus has now memory modules that are x16 and x32 the normal data rate compared to only x4 for GDDR5 for example.
The problem is adoption (lack of it) and probably also price (that was the main problem last time).

by: TheLostSwedeIt's not YouTube that's evil, it's the US law makers and the music, movie and TV companies that are evil as they're the ones enforcing that content is block... Ok, this is way off topic but hey...